Sam Houston State moved up to No. 2 in the final Sports Network NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision rankings for 2012.

The Bearkats stood No. 5 in the final regular season poll in December. Sam Houston defeated all three of the Big Sky Conference's tri-champions (Cal Poly, Montana State and Eastern Washington) to reach the NCAA Division I Championship Finals in Frisco for the second year in a row.

The No. 2 rankings both in 2011 and 2012 stand as Sam Houston State's highest final national poll standings in program history. The team's previous high was No. 3 in 2004.

National champion North Dakota State was the Sports Network's No. 1 team. The Bison, the Missouri Valley Football Conference champions, were ranked No. 1 in 11 of the 14 polls this season.

Sam Houston State (11-4) was voted second on 128 of the 142 ballots. Coach Willie Fritz's Bearkats, the Southland Conference co-champions, finished behind North Dakota State in the point total, 3,550 to 3,386.

The first teams outside the Top 25 were Eastern Illinois, the Ohio Valley Conference champion, and Indiana State, which handed North Dakota State its only loss of the season, 17-14 on Oct. 13.

The CAA finished with the most teams in the Top 25 with six, followed by the Big Sky with four and the Missouri Valley and SoCon with three each. There were two teams each from the Southland, Big South and Patriot League, and one each from the MEC, NEC and Ohio Valley Conference.

A national panel of sports information and media relations directors, broadcasters, writers and other dignitaries selected the Top 25 throughout the season. A first-place vote was worth 25 points, a second-place vote 24 points, all the way down to one point for a 25th-place vote.